The Drake Runner
by JMarieAllenPoe
Summary: Raised in the same household, sharing the same wet nurse, Jack & Hiccup grow up in unequal worlds: Jack, a rich, famed man's son—Hiccup, son of Jack's dad's servant, is a Dreki. Their fates equal the tragedy of the world around them. When Jack & his dad flee the country for a new life in the US, Jack thinks he escaped his past. But he can't leave the memory of Hiccup behind him. AU


**Disclaimer: I do not own **_**How To Train Your Dragon**_**, **_**Rise of the Guardians**_**, or **_**The Kite Runner**_**, though I **_**do**_ **own a legally bought copy of the novel.**

**Author's Note: Hi! I'm JMarieAllenPoe, and this is my first HiJack fanfic that is posted to my account. I wrote another HiJack one-shot a few months ago called "Stay That Way," that is posted on the "Team Dragon Star" account and will be getting a sequel someday, I promise, but today is not that day.**

**One thing I should say, though, is that, though I ship HiJack as my OTP, this fic will actually rarely have HiJack romantically. It is a very angsty story. Just a warning. And 99% of this fic will be in Jack's point of view.**

**This fanfic is based off of one of my favorite novels: **_**The Kite Runner**_ **by Khaled Hosseini, which I first read last year for an AP class. The reason for the title is because the word "drake" is Swedish for both of the English words "dragon" and "kite." (So it is a wonderful pun, and I absolutely **_**love**_ **puns.) Similar to the German word "drachen," which has the same English translations. I have a lot planned out for this story already since it will be pretty parallel to the novel that inspired this AU. Chapter one was the shortest chapter in the novel, so it should be the same here. The other chapters will be ****_much, much_**** longer, don't worry.**

**Also, I would like to thank Alexandria Keating** **for indirectly inspiring me to write a HiJack fic based off a novel that I read for my AP Literature class. (Her HiJack fic "First Impressions and Misconceptions" is based off of **_**Pride and Prejudice**_**, and it is really good! Go check her out!)**

**I hope you enjoy, and please review.**

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><p><strong>Full Summary: <strong>Taking us from the Barbaric Archipelago in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Drake Runner is the story of friendship between two boys growing up in Berk. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Jack and Hiccup grow up in different worlds: Jack is the son of a wealthy, prominent man, while Hiccup, the son of Jack's father's servant, is a Dreki — a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When Jack and his father flee the country for a new life in Burgess, in America, Jack thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet, he cannot leave the memory of Hiccup behind him.

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><p><strong>One<strong>

**_December 2014_**

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><p>I became what I am today when I was fourteen years old, on a frosty, darkened day in the winter of 1989. I would like to say that the moon, big, fun and bright, had told me what I was to become, but that's not what happened. Not even close. I remember the exact moment, kneeling low behind a long trench of upturned earth, glancing into the cove with the frozen lake. That was a long time ago, but I've learned it's wrong what they say about the past, about how you can bury it. Because the past drags, carves, its way out, no matter how much of it you want to forget. Now, looking back, I realize I've been glancing into that isolated cove for the past twenty-five years.<p>

One day last spring, my friend Gobber called from Hysteria Island. He asked me to come see him. Standing by the fireplace with the receiver to my ear, I knew it wasn't just Gobber on the other end. It was my past of un-forgiven wrongdoings. After the phone conversation ended, I went for a walk along Emma Lake, which was frozen no matter what time of year. The late-morning sun sparkled on the ice where a half-dozen children skated and played in the grass. Then I glanced up and saw two drakes, two kites, green with red tails, flying in the sky together. They danced high above the treetops, battling each other through the south side of the park, like two eyes that watched over Burgess, the city I now call home. And suddenly Hiccup's voice murmured in my mind: _For you, a thousand times over_. Hiccup the fishbone drake runner.

I sat on a park bench near the statue of Thaddeus Burgess. I thought of what Gobber said just before he hung up, almost in retrospect. _There is a way to be good again._ I looked up at those twin drakes. I thought about Hiccup. Thought about Pabbi. Torrance. Berk. I thought about the life I had lived before the winter of 1989 had strung along and irreversibly changed everything. And made me what I am today.


End file.
